


mermaid blues

by vanillarouge



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Brief Genderswitch, Character Death, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Introspection, Masturbation, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Rose-Centric, The tags are terrible but the drabbles are pretty I swear., Though not permanent., implied eating disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillarouge/pseuds/vanillarouge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The daily life of a fallen light Goddess with a blog, post-lost Paradise.</p>
<p>(Rose Lalonde is not going cuckoo, promise, promise: Presented in three acts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	mermaid blues

**Author's Note:**

> three drabbles written for my post-sburb [rose lalonde rp blog](rosellelalonde.tumblr.com), where magic!anons are a thing, hence the temporary genderswitch. man, that was quite an episode.
> 
> (this ocurrs in the same universe as[ this character study ](639606)and this [johnrose drabbles](771856).)

**i.**

**le souffle coupé, tu n'es plus son appât.**

It is curiosity, in the end, which brings you to do it.

It’s always curiosity.

You stand in front of your full length mirror in the middle of the night, when it’s late enough to feel like you can do anything (anything at all).

You’ve shed all of your clothes onto the floor, carelessly; your heavy sweaters and your jeans, underwear that’s more than a little uncomfortable. You’re cold. Your skin pricks with goosebumps even though you’ve closed all the windows.

This isn’t your body.

This isn’t your body, and even though you’ve never been shy, you can’t deny the heaviness of embarrassment tugging at your stomach once you meet your eyes in the mirror.

It makes you look away. Return your gaze slowly. You look frightened, like a deer in the headlights. Vulnerable.

You can recognize yourself, you have not become a complete stranger. This is you, but it isn’t.

And you’re still too thin; you could stab someone with your elbows and your hips. Your limbs knock awkwardly into each other each time you shift, pale light ghosts and winter; trembling.

But there are loud differences, too. Your shoulders are wider now; your hips are noticeably smaller. Your hands are larger, stronger, and the angles of your face are sharper, your nose more defined, your eyebrows fuller. Your hair is shorter, too, and it tickles your forehead and the back of your neck; dishevelled. You make a pretty boy.

You are not disgusted. The initial shock and distress have melted into something a little like disquieting novelty and uncertainty, and innocent, bare curiosity.

There is a certain attractiveness to the sharpness of your shoulders, the angles of your jaw, the smooth muscles of your stomach, going down and down and blending into an elegant v shape towards your—

Oh.

Welp.

It isn’t without dismay that you remember your initial plans.

You concede that an opportunity like this for exploration and knowledge, light on matters that otherwise would have forever remained dark to you should not be ignored. Aside be Dave’s neverending insisting that you wack it, bothersome and embarrassing and meddlesome as it is.

You agree with yourself that for all that is good and holy, you certainly don’t want to be thinking about Dave right now. Gross. And awkward. You _are_ twins after all.

You meet your eyes in the mirror again, running a hand through your hair.

Much later, maybe somewhere between midnight and the calm before sunrise, you lay in your bed with your sheets up to your nose and your hand between your legs, panting and tense, sweaty and uncomfortable.

It takes you more cheap erotic fiction and sheer force of will to get here than you’d ever like to admit, but it’s midnight and you can do anything, except bring yourself to care even a little bit you just want this to be _over_ , but you don’t, and it feels familiar almost to the point of nostalgia, but it doesn’t, and—

And it’s strange; it’s strange, and foreign and _hard_ , and you snort to yourself at what could possibly be the worst choice of words at this very moment, and your forearms hurt and you remember writing once in your journal that your libido is deader than disco and it’s your fault and you know why.

(Not eating does that to you. The libido thing. It’s too sad a thought to be having right now, so you don’t. You’re powerful like that. You’re in control.)

The back of your hand to your wet lips is enough to silence the breathy gasp that leaves you when you come; you’ve never been too loud, and it didn’t feel that good, and you’re suddenly heavy and hot, dirty and exhausted.

Everything is much more quiet when it’s midnight.

You lay on your bed for long moments feeling sticky and gross, so drowsy it almost hurts, and you make the mistake of trying to touch yourself again. Bite your lip and shudder. You’ve made better choices.

Your hands are dirty.

And it’s sick, sick curiosity that leads you to make terrible choices again so you lick your fingers and wince at the taste. And you think, what an intolerable cosmic unfairness, and you clean your hands on your sheets because the highway of poor choices has already been taken.

You tell yourself that you will take a midnight shower in fifteen seconds, and fall asleep with the lie on the tip of your tongue.

;;

**ii.**

**tonight, baby, you can start again.**

You sendificate the last Valentine’s Day card and slip into a little black dress.

It’s 9:30 and the house is silent.

You’re a little cold —you’re _always_  cold— but there’s a sort of quiet comfort to the dim streetlights slipping in through your curtains, the feeling of a big soft brush against your cheeks. You’ve tied your hair in a tasteful updo, and you’ve painted your lips a deep red burgundy, and you’re wearing high heels. Your collarbones and shoulders are sharp and prominent, but the way the dress is cut smoothens down all of your edges, your angles and imperfections.

You feel pretty. Beautiful, even.

It’s 9:30 and the house is cold and silent, and John and Dave are out on their date. Nobody is coming to pick you up. Nobody will sweep you off your feet this year, Rose, long gone are the days of plastic smiles and saccharine sweet romance.

Nobody’s coming to pick you up. You are not waiting.

You take your time to leave the room and walk down the stairs, oh so very carefully. You are so fragile lately,  you wouldn’t want to trip and break something. You stand in the parlour in the dark, breathing in the stillness; the hush of late in the evening, the familiarity. An abrupt sense of belonging. The knowledge that long gone are the days of plastic smiles and saccharine sweet romance. That Dave and John have not forgotten you.

That this is your home now.

It’s 9:30, and it’s Valentine’s Day, and nobody’s coming to pick you up.

You get into your car and put on an old radio station, and you drive with the windows down; the air messes up your hair but you feel lively tonight, you feel like singing along all of the love songs.

You sit alone in a classic old diner lit only by gently-buzzing neon signs and street lights, soaking up the atmosphere, the vinyl seats, the tall stools, the antique Coca-Cola merchandise littering the walls, the warm smell of food meant for breakfast. Slow lovesongs by someone who sounds like Elvis playing in the background.

A waitress approaches you, plump and kind, and she calls you honey; asks if your date has ditched you.  You don’t know how to answer, but she places a plate in front of you, a slice of pumpkin pie, whipped cream on top, and she tells you it’s on the house, because you’re too skinny and you’re looking a little sad.

You stare at it forever, until you don’t, and with the smallest of spoons you take a bite and the pie is warm, and sweet, and it tastes like home and glory and a hug and soft warm sweaters and summer. Hours merge into each other and you sit alone, until you’re one with the stainless steel panels, with the checkerboard tile floors and the bright neon colours, and it’s soothing.

With cold fingertips and smudged lipstick, and little by little birdy bites you finish your little slice of pumpkin pie, and in that moment, you swear you feel something a little like love.

;;

**iii.**

**holy water cannot help you now.**

 (this is the way your world ends; not with a bang but a whimper.)

There’s nothing violent or beautiful about dying.

Just hollowness in your lungs and an almost ubiquitous misery, an undercurrent of sheer fear that’s as scandalously genuine as it is subtly unhinged.

And it feels as if you’ve been defeated; seven hundred chanting tongues amidst your head because you’re losing, Rose, you’re losing you’re losing, you’ve lost.

Yet they dissolve by the time you’re back —

(back? back, but from where? did you ever even leave? or does it shrouds a more volatile meaning, something like an out of body experience; an astral projection gone astray somewhere halfway to a brain blackout and a heart power outrage)

— leave you wondering if it was nothing but a frenzied chemical release, or something less earthly.

Your hands are cold. You’ve been sleeping, curled into yourself for too long without a blanket, massacred by biting your nails and smiling and pretending nothing is wrong; by telling yourself, yes, yes, I’ll get rid of this horrible habit in the morning. It’ll all be better tomorrow, except your hands are cold and your insides got rotten and you were lying and it never got better.

You’ve euthanized yourself not by starvation but by a moment of weakness; uncontrollable, sordid slices of hunger that lead to hypophosphatemia and acute heart failure in the last throes of a feasting rampage.

You were beautiful yesterday, you know. You were beautiful yesterday when you were outside in the light and your hair was short and you were frowning.

You were beautiful when you weren’t waking up to wary knocking on your door and your phone vibrating agonizingly under your pillow, seven messages from people you know but can’t remember; a boy who reminds you of yourself chattering about constellations from the future.

You close your eyes and your heart is beating loud enough to drown out the sound of your lungs resuscitating.

**Author's Note:**

> Fondu au Noir—Coeur de Pirate.  
> Only the Young — Brandon Flowers.  
> Seven Devils— Florence + The Machine.
> 
> (i really like it when u stroke my ego with nice comments & u can follow for more soft rose at missvanillamilkshake.tumblr)


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